Re: a desperate request for licence metadata (was Re: migrating w iki content from twiki (w.d.net) to moinmoin (w.d.org))
Jesús M. Navarro wrote:
> Hi, Andreas:
>
> El Martes, 06 Septiembre 2005 18:20, Andreas Schuldei escribió:
> > * Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com> [2005-09-06 17:39:06]:
> > > Which I fail to understand, as the limited rights provided to me by
> > > law should be sufficient for the wiki content in most cases.
> >
> > i spoke to a german lawyer about this exact (license) issue when
> > skolelinux.de pondered an applicable license for it's wiki and
> > aparently it is doubtfull that wiki content is worthy to protect
> > in the first place. There needs to be a certain quality level
> > reached, aparently, which is not necessarily given in a wiki.
> >
> > So this discussion about a license for the debian wiki might be
> > very debianish but also irrelevant. (c:
>
> No, I don't think it isn't.
> Even if German laws renders not having a explicit license good enough for the
> case at hand, reality is copyright laws *tends* to "overprotect" the author
> "against" other (potential) users. By explicitly saying what are the rights
> you give to your users you:
> a) Make a case by the explicit announce it (so people can become aware that
> not everybody will give the same rigths with their works) and
> b) Insure you are not dependant (to an extent, at least) on what's the
> "default" for any given country's laws about this item.
>
> In Spain, for instance, not mentioning any explicit copyright notice gives
> complete control to the author and no control (except for reading it in the
> very media it originally was published) to the "user".
Same in Germany. Relying on the speculation that no Debian wiki article
will ever be good enough to gain copyright protection is unwise IMHO.
It breaks down in exactly those cases where licensing is most likely to
become a real issue.
This may still not be a problem for Debian, because it can claim the
author's concludent permission to publish his work, but everyone who
redistributes/republishes some content from the wiki may face unexpected
trouble.
IANAL,
Thiemo
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